hard stool in a formula-fed baby

Children's health is very important for parents. Relatives are especially attentive to the condition of infants, constantly analyzing their behavior and mood. When hard grains appear in a baby’s stool, parents think it’s time to treat constipation, but this is not necessarily a sign of constipation. Also not considered constipation are bowel movements that occur after 1-2 days or the baby’s behavior when defecating - he grunts and turns red during regular bowel movements.

Constipation is considered only when a child has hard stool, regardless of how he feels at the time and whether he recovers regularly.

Causes of the disease

Let's look at the most likely causes of green stool in a breastfed baby.

Adaptation of the baby's intestines to the environment. Already on the 5th day of the child’s life, black meconium ceases to be excreted, and it is replaced by brown-colored feces, and then green. By the end of the second week, the stool becomes yellow, which is natural for this period.
If a nursing mother eats mostly green foods. Green stool in a baby can be caused by foods such as parsley, broccoli, and dill. The enzymes contained in such products have a green tint and are passed along with mother's milk to the baby, which is what causes the color of stool.
If the mother temporarily switches the baby to a milk formula that has a high iron content. This element can cause greenish stools in infants during breastfeeding. Then you just need to change the mixture.
Imbalance of foremilk and hindmilk. Mother's milk is characterized by heterogeneity, that is, at the beginning of feeding, foremilk is released, and a little later - hindmilk. It is hind milk that serves as food for the baby, and fore milk as drink. Once a baby weans from the breast after being saturated with foremilk, he does not receive the fats contained in hindmilk. Drinking passes very quickly through the baby’s gastrointestinal tract and causes green stool in infants.
Dysbacteriosis is the occurrence of an imbalance of intestinal microflora, which can be caused by various reasons. This also includes acute intestinal infection, which is a fairly serious disease. At the slightest suspicion, you should contact a specialist.

What deviations are possible when a baby has loose stools?

Loose stool in a breastfeeding baby, which is accompanied by an unpleasant odor, is a sign of diarrhea. You should immediately consult a doctor, but it is not advisable to stop lactation, since it is mother’s milk that helps fill the lack of microelements necessary for the baby.
Frequent bowel movements in a newborn, about 8-12 times per day, are usually caused by high sensitivity to the treatment of the mother or child, as well as to certain products. Often this reaction occurs from cow's milk protein.
Foamy stool in a breastfed newborn is a sign of an imbalance of foremilk and hindmilk. Doctors call this “lactose deficiency.” But in fact, this diagnosis is extremely rare and, as a rule, this condition can be normalized by completely emptying each breast before applying to the other. This situation means that the baby receives a significantly larger volume of hindmilk, which contains less lactose.

The influence of nutrition of a nursing mother

Carefully! The mother's daily diet is directly related to the feces of the baby. If a nursing woman's daily menu contains greens, green vegetables and fruits, it is not surprising why baby's stool turns green

Diarrhea and constipation are also caused by errors in a woman’s diet during lactation or the composition of a specific adapted formula during artificial feeding.

Dysbacteriosis

Under the influence of bacterial flora, the baby's stool changes. Harmful bacteria not only disrupt digestion and cause green stool, but also cause serious problems with children's health.

Simultaneously with green stool, the baby’s temperature rises, mood changes, sleep, appetite and psycho-emotional balance are disturbed. You cannot do without a therapeutic diet and medical assistance.

Lactase deficiency

Develops as a result of dysbacteriosis. Due to the difficulty in processing milk sugar, children's stool becomes liquid, acquires a green tint and a pungent odor.

This disease cannot be treated, but goes away on its own before the baby is 1 year old. To normalize stool, it is recommended that a nursing mother adjust her daily diet.

Therapy to replenish lactose in the child’s body is also individually selected and carried out.

Why is there foam in baby's stool?

Why does my baby poop foam? The mere presence of foam in a child’s stool does not indicate any terrible threat to his health. Most often, foamy stools are a functional disorder and not a pathology, that is, they disappear with age.

If foam appears in the baby’s stool regularly and for a long time, the baby is bothered by gas, or constant rumbling is heard in the stomach, you should definitely consult a doctor.

Signs of diarrhea

Diarrhea is often accompanied by foam and mucus. You need to find out the cause of diarrhea: either the mother or child ate something wrong, or it is some kind of intestinal infection, poisoning. By what symptoms can you tell that a child has diarrhea with foam, and not just loose stools?

Anxiety and refusal to eat. The baby is capricious, presses his legs to his tummy, and refuses to suckle from the breast or formula.
Increased frequency of stools and an increase in mucus and foam. The baby may defecate every hour, the consistency of the stool becomes more watery and foamy.
Color change. Stool most often turns green or yellow.
Sudden emptying. With diarrhea, stool comes out abruptly, with pops and gases.
Obvious symptoms of acute intestinal infection. In addition to diarrhea, vomiting, high fever, lethargy of the child.

How to help a child before the doctor arrives? It is necessary to provide his body with fluid. If loose, foamy stools continue for several days, there is a risk of dehydration. Doctors recommend rehydration, that is, restoration of lost fluid. For this purpose, special electrolytic solutions are used that restore the water-salt balance in the body. Under no circumstances should you stop breastfeeding your baby.

Baby Poop Guide: Birth to 6 Months

When a child is born, he is abruptly transferred from feeding on blood ultrafiltrate to a “milk diet”. In the first few months, the baby’s gastrointestinal tract “matures.” That's why the best food option for him now is breast milk. However, it is precisely because of this that a newborn’s stool can have 50 shades, and all of them are within the normal range.

In the first two days of a child's life, meconium comes out. This is a dark, sticky, viscous stool that formed in utero. Usually mothers know about it and the appearance of meconium is not a cause for concern.

With the start of feeding, the stool is replaced with a transitional one. It is usually greenish-brown and may contain cheesy inclusions. Only after a few days does milky stool appear (yellow-brown, quite light). And here mothers begin to look closely at him, almost under a microscope (and looking at him with a magnifying glass is a common thing). What can they see?

The very first thing you should pay attention to is the consistency of the stool. In breastfed children it may be quite liquid.

It is not scary if the stool of exclusively breastfed children is almost completely absorbed into the diaper.

If the child has not pooped for several days, the first portion may be quite dense, while subsequent portions may be softer. In some infants, stool becomes less frequent and thicker over time, while in others it may remain quite liquid until complementary foods are introduced.

Children on artificial or mixed feeding will have thicker stools than their peers who are on breastfeeding, and this is normal. The main thing is that it is not very dense and dry (in the form of “goat balls”).

Some children can go to the toilet in small portions, but often (at the same time, mothers say that each diaper is changed with feces). Other babies rarely walk, but the volume of one portion of feces is significant.

Constipation in newborns is extremely rare, and it never occurs without very dense, difficult-to-pass feces. This condition requires consultation and treatment.

Foamy stool may indicate that the baby is eating a lot of foremilk, which is rich in carbohydrates, and less of hindmilk, which is rich in fats. In this case, you can either feed one breast longer (if the baby “eats” both in one feeding), or express a little foremilk before feeding (if the baby gets enough of one).

How often should a baby poop? If he is breastfed, then at least after each feeding. The frequency of stool can vary from 0 to 10 times a day, and this is normal.

Children on breastfeeding may not have stool, and for 7-14 days. Then everything will return to normal on its own. If a child with rare bowel movements does not experience discomfort due to this, there is no need to “help” him by introducing foreign objects into the anus.

The description of daily yellow, homogeneous stool in newborns comes from the times when our mothers spent the first three months on maternity leave, and then went to work, sending their babies to nurseries and being forced to transfer them to artificial feeding. For children on IV, this famous daily stool of porridge is typical.

The color of stool is provided by bilirubin, a fat-soluble pigment, one of the components of bile. It may be present in greater or lesser volume. The “saturation” of the color of the stool depends on its quantity.

Newborn feces can range from light yellow to dark olive in color, and this is all normal. The main thing is that there is no blood in the stool and that bilirubin is present (that is, that the stool is not white-gray).

Blood loss from the gastrointestinal tract is never considered normal, but swallowed maternal blood (for example, from cracked nipples) is often mistaken for gastrointestinal bleeding.

The color of stool is indirectly affected by the composition of breast milk. It depends on many factors (mother’s diet, the appearance of stress hormones, etc.). In response to these fluctuations, bile may be released in a larger or smaller volume, so the stool may be either a little darker or a little lighter.

Since the composition of the mixture is always the same, the baby’s “final product” does not change color from day to day. The feces of infants on IV may contain cheesy inclusions and rarely mucus.

These babies' stools are usually thicker and are not completely absorbed into the diaper.

Usually we don’t look at our stool, we flush it down the toilet and that’s it. The same should be done with the contents of the diaper. These are waste products of the body and are not intended to be examined under a magnifying glass or microscope.

Normal stool with artificial feeding

To determine the baby's health status, there are certain criteria - the frequency of stool, the color, consistency and smell of stool. The norm of feces in a baby is a relative concept, each baby is individual. How a newborn will have bowel movements depends on many factors:

type of delivery;
concomitant pathologies;
degree of maturity of the digestive system and others.

Color and smell

There are average standards for indicators of healthy stool during artificial feeding. The color of the stool depends on the type of formula and may change over time. This is the normal color of stool in bottle-fed newborns:

yellow with a greenish tint;
straw with white inclusions;
dark yellow to bright orange;
brownish yellow.

Consistency

For a bottle-fed baby, soft, mushy stools are considered normal. Variations are acceptable - from liquid to compacted pulp. Ideally, the contents of a newborn's intestines should be homogeneous. Liquid stool with lumps is also considered normal. The older a child gets, the denser his intestinal contents become. By the age of one year, the chair is already formed, but remains plastic and soft.

Frequency of bowel movements

Most babies defecate immediately after eating, but if newborns have stool once a day, this is also not considered a pathology. The normal frequency of bowel movements ranges from 1 time every 1-2 days to 10-12 times a day. The amount of feces is related to the amount of food consumed. On average, in the first month of life, the volume of feces reaches 20 g per day, and by the year - up to 200 g.

Causes of green stool in infants

The causes of green stool in infants can be dangerous

It is worth paying attention to the presence of impurities in the stool, changes in its consistency, the general condition of the child and the dynamics of weight gain. Thus, green stool with mucus in a baby may appear during teething or during colds.

If green stool persists for 3-4 days or more, then this is an indication to visit a pediatrician.

You should immediately consult a doctor in the following cases:

The child has frequent green, watery stools and begins to lose weight. Such symptoms may indicate infectious diseases, poisoning or allergic reactions;
scanty green stool, accompanied by a tense abdomen and problems with bowel movements, indicates constipation caused by various reasons;
green stools with an unpleasant odor and a lot of foam are signs of lactase deficiency;
green stool with mucus and a pungent odor can appear with dysbacteriosis and viral infections.

Green liquid stool in a baby

A single loose green stool in a baby should not be a cause for panic. But if it persists for 2 days or more, and is also accompanied by restlessness and moodiness of the child, this is a reason to consult a doctor. The causes of such symptoms can be the following pathologies:

Intestinal infections caused by various pathogens: fungi, viruses or bacteria. Symptoms of such diseases are: fever, anxiety, lack of appetite, vomiting, colic, lethargy and greenish diarrhea.
Dibacteriosis. In addition to green stools, it is accompanied by bloating, colic, skin rash, and other symptoms are possible.
Viral diseases. Even a common cold can disrupt the intestinal microflora and lead to the appearance of green, loose stool in infants.
Allergic reaction. By changing the color and consistency of stool, a child may respond to a change in baby food, errors in the diet of a nursing woman, or taking certain medications. Green diarrhea often appears after treatment with antibiotics.

Green stool with mucus in an infant

Most often, green stool with mucus in infants is observed due to dysbacteriosis, that is, when the composition of the natural microflora is disrupted. Dysbacteriosis can manifest itself not only in green stools mixed with mucus, but also in skin rashes, sleep and appetite disturbances, colic, anxiety and other symptoms.

The cause of green stool with mucus can be a cold caused by viruses. In addition, green feces often indicate that the selected mixture is not suitable for the baby. In such cases, it is better to consult a doctor and change the mixture.

Green foamy stool in infant

In most cases, green foamy stool in infants occurs due to a lack of enzymes in the baby’s intestines. A slight foamy consistency and color change may appear when a new product is introduced into a child’s diet or a nursing mother breaks her diet. A slight foaming of stool in an infant may be observed after taking Plantex or sucking a pacifier.

Other, more rare, causes of foamy green stool in infants may be: staphylococcal infection, taking medications, dysbacteriosis, food allergies, intestinal infections. Only a pediatrician can determine an accurate diagnosis.

Dark green stool in infant

The dark green color of a baby's stool is the result of changes in the fat content of breast milk. Since the child’s digestive system is not yet fully formed, it cannot quickly respond to various changes. Bilirubin, produced by the liver, gives stool its dark green color. The change in color may be due to the fact that the baby sucks only the first milk with low fat content, and does not reach the hind milk, which has a higher fat content.

In infants fed infant formula, a change in the color of stool to dark green may occur when changing the formula and taking iron supplements.

What to do if a baby is constipated?

Constipation is considered only when a child has hard stool, regardless of how he feels at the time and whether he recovers regularly.

Content:

In a breastfed baby, hard feces are rare. In infants, stools are medium thick, often runny, and smell like cottage cheese.

When switching to artificial feeding, the baby’s stool begins to resemble adult stool, it develops a characteristic odor, and the consistency becomes thicker.

Typical stool for constipation: “sheep stool” - in the form of individual hard pellets, or oblong shaped, molded from individual fragments.

Hard feces in a baby, if it appears constantly, provokes skin rashes, restless behavior, and blood may be released during bowel movements, which causes anemia in the child.

The reasons for the formation of hard feces include the following factors:

congenital intestinal pathology - duplication of the colon, Hirschsprung's disease;
rickets;
heart and adrenal failure;
insufficient maturity of the intestine;
diseases of the endocrine system;
spinal cord diseases;
abnormalities in the development of the nervous system.

With lactose deficiency, the stool is loose, but bowel movements are painful, and hard grains appear in the stool, indicating a lack of absorption of nutrients.

The exact reason why stool is hard can only be determined after a special examination.

In most cases, hard feces in infants with artificial or breastfeeding appear due to complementary feeding with an unadapted diet. Any types of complementary foods that are introduced unreasonably before 5 months - juices, vegetable purees, whole cow's milk - lead to disruption of intestinal function.

Breastfed babies do not need such supplements; they receive nutrients from the mother's body. The intestines are not yet sufficiently formed; there is not enough flora in it to help absorb foreign products.

If it seems that the child should be fortified, this should be done by expanding the diet of the nursing mother and enriching it with foods with a high content of nutrients. It is possible to solve the problem of a baby's bowel movements by adding fresh fermented milk products to his mother's menu.

In an infant receiving artificial nutrition, “sheep feces” may appear as a result of an allergic reaction to the composition of the mixture - high iron content provokes constipation. In this case, you need to choose a diet that normalizes bowel movements.

In some cases, the problem of constipation in artificial babies is easily solved - when diluting baby food, add more water than is written in the instructions. But it must be borne in mind that such nutrition may not cover energy costs.

There are special mixtures that eliminate bowel problems.

Pediatricians most often recommend using the following medications:

Nutrilon Comfort - numbered 1 and 2;
Humana AR;
Samper Bifidus.

Their compositions contain whey proteins and gum, which promotes the formation of normal microflora and accelerates the breakdown of incoming food mass. Mixtures with prebiotics that have a laxative effect include: Agusha, Nutrilak Premium, Frisolac Gold, Similac, Babushkino Lukoshko... Baby food containing lactulose - Semper and HUMANA - populate the intestines with beneficial flora.

The latter mixtures should not be introduced into complementary feeding for an infant who often suffers from diarrhea - they have a pronounced laxative effect.

If the baby’s intestines cannot adapt to food in any way, and bowel movements are so difficult that hard feces with blood come out from stress, then the child needs help.

However, before giving an enema to a newborn, it is worth making sure that the blood is actually from the large intestine and is caused by excessive stress.

If your baby has stool streaked with blood, dark in color and with an unpleasant odor, this indicates a problem with the stomach or duodenum and you should immediately contact your pediatrician.

When the baby is restless, he has regurgitation with an unpleasant odor, there were no bowel movements for up to 3 days, and together with hard feces, bloody mucus comes out if he strains, most likely this indicates a partial intestinal obstruction.

Immediate medical attention is then required before the obstruction becomes complete.

If there is excessive strain during bowel movements, the blood is bright and there is not much of it.

You should not give an enema right away - in the future the child will get used to such effects and will not be able to recover on his own.

You need to start with the following steps:

Tummy massage. The baby is laid on his back and the stomach is massaged clockwise;
Exercise bicycle and “tuck” - when the legs are bent and tucked towards the stomach;
Defecation is easier if, after feeding, the baby is held in his arms in the required position over the potty, pressing his knees to his stomach.

If these measures do not help, then the anus is lubricated with glycerin or boiled vegetable oil, the tip of a cotton swab is inserted there 1 cm and the nerves of the anus are irritated, stimulating the process of defecation. If this does not help, then a glycerin suppository is administered.

And only when the efforts have not reached the goal, you can give the baby an enema.

To prevent babies from developing hard stool and having painful bowel movements, it is necessary to analyze how the baby’s intestines react to the mixture. In some cases, it is enough to give the child more food to make the stool softer.

To avoid constipation, you should do gymnastics with your baby - do special exercises with him, massage his tummy, lay it on him. Feeding should be done at the same time every day, and overfeeding or underfeeding should be avoided.

If the baby is breastfed, the nursing mother must monitor her own diet and her own stool - all her intestinal problems affect the baby’s health.

Particular care should be taken when introducing complementary foods. It is necessary to ensure that food is digested and intestinal upset does not occur.

If you have problems with the intestines and assume that everything will work itself out, as soon as the baby outgrows it, the condition will worsen and constipation will become chronic. This condition significantly impairs the baby’s development and causes retardation in growth and physiological development.

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